Most people associate doctors' prescriptions with pharmaceutical concoctions. But now physicians in a Houston clinic are prescribing, in addition to medications, something else for patients with prehypertension, hypertension, diabetes and prediabetes.
What is the new "wonder drug?" A one-year membership in Houston BCycle, the city's bike-share program. Thanks to a collaboration between Houston Bicycle, the American Heart Association and Legacy Community Health in the city's Fifth Ward, patients can take a traditional or electric bicycle for 90 minutes at any BCycle location.
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| Photo by Lucio Vasquez |
Those organizations began to work on the collaboration more than two years ago. Then the pandemic struck. The director of Legacy continued to talk with the AHA and Houston Bicycle and the collaboration, called Bike Rx, finally started in February.
The collaboration also helps to fulfill a goal articulated by Houston BCycle communications manager Mary De Bauche: improving transportation options as well as the health and well-being of people in underserved communities. Most residents of Legacy's Fifth Ward locale are Black or Hispanic, many of whom live below the official poverty level. In such communities, hypertension and diabetes are more common than in more affluent areas, in part because of the limited transportation and recreation options, which compound the stresses of being poor and experiencing racial and ethnic bigotry.
While the "bike prescription" program is, for the moment, available only at Legacy, De Bauche and officials of the other participating organizations hope that it will expand to other sites in the city.
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